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disco_tracy writes "Lithuanian amusement park worker and current PhD candidate in London's Royal College of Art's Design Interactions department, Julijonas Urbonas, has made a design for a hypothetical coaster that could be the future of humane euthanasia. Urbonas says that it is engineered to give a person a way to die with 'with elegance and euphoria.' From the article: 'The three-minute ride involves a long, slow, climb -- nearly a third of a mile long -- that lifts one up to a height of more than 1,600 feet, followed by a massive fall and seven strategically sized and placed loops. The final descent and series of loops take all of one minute. But the gravitational force -- 10 Gs -- from the spinning loops at 223 miles per hour in that single minute is lethal.'"

Sure there is. I've been bedside and holding the hand of three different people as they expired. Death is about the only elegant part of aging. Keeping people as living vegetables in hospitals and nursing homes isn't elegant. It's greedy and selfish.

Sure there is. I've been bedside and holding the hand of three different people as they expired. Death is about the only elegant part of aging.

I've been there too. Watching the failing struggle to stay awake and aware because, in between stretches of tiredness and confusion, they have moments of absolute clarity where they realize they'll never open their eyes again once they close them.

Hours later, watching them still breathing slowly but far too slowly to maintain consciousness or even sleep. The body struggles desperately on even after the mind has left, a loved one reduced to little more than a broken automaton. Holding a hand that's only wa

Unfortunately, you can't avoid death. If you want to make it more "elegant", then I would suggest that euthanasia as the obvious choice. There are plenty of methods available that would allow for a quicker death, long before your loved one is laid up in the hospital and barely even aware of their surroundings.:(

True. But name one person who people say "died elegantly". Peacefully. Violently. Quietly. Heroically. Instantly. Alone. But never gracefully, or artistically, or "in a refined manner".

Death is an inherently ugly thing. He can tart it up all he wants, it's still someone's life ending and he's describing it like he's found a one-line fix for a particularly annoying software bug. Of course, it's also a goddamn roller coaster, so expecting him to appreciate the plight of the terminally ill is perhaps asking

While I hesitate to comment as I feel I am treading on your grief to do so it really must be said that we will all eventually have to die. Some choose to fight for every last moment that they may spend with their loved ones, others may choose to meet the end sooner than later on their own terms for other reasons, whether fear of a long drawn out ordeal, or what have you. In relation to this I interpreted his comments about elegance to be relative to other potential ends we may face, and a comment on our rig

This system isn't crushing a person to death. It is using force-induced hypoxia to deprive the brain of oxygen.

The trouble is that force-induced hypoxia is not an elegant method of death. Fighter-pilots and people who have ridden a cetrifuge know the distress caused by excessive G-force on the body.

However, a painless and humane method of hypoxia can be achieved by depriving the subject of oxygen in the air, and replacing it with an inert, non-toxic gas that does not irritate the body. My preferred

When training us about "confined space entries [osha.gov]" at one chemical company I worked at (before switching to writing business software... as opposed to chemical process modelling), they told us about a contractor who entered a confined space at one of our plants without a confined space entry permit where nitrogen lines were vented (over-pressure vents or something like that). Before he entered, the lines vented a lot of nitrogen, displacing all the oxygen. From what I heard, the investigators figured the guy w

Perhaps you missed the "long, slow, climb" part. That's bad enough even when you're not sure you're going to die. By the time you hit the top you'd be wishing you had a gun. Maybe they'll put guns under the seats.

I don't see why it would matter if you died on the way up from fright or died on the way down from a snapped neck or simply crushed to death.

In either case you arrive at the end of the ride with pee soaked pants, vomit caked shirt, and underwear bulging and smelling worsethan you ever did while living. Probably to be unceremoniously dumped into a coffin by uncaring attendants dressed in Tyvec suits and breathing gear.

I just wanted to nitpick and point out that every death is "a lack-of-oxygen-to-brain death," by medical definition. The interesting question is the reason oxygen stopped going to the brain, the "cause of death."

In this case, I believe the medical diagnosis would be "terminal velocity."

I used to play that. I would get a successful park then after that I would see how quickly I could kill my attendance with death coasters. The best part was that deleting a single track space and rebuilding it would make visitors thing it was a whole new roller coaster that was safe! Silly stupid AI humans. I also made sure all my janitors didn't bother with vomit. I still had the sweep the paths, clean up the trash, and mow the grass but I made vomit a feature!

The red bull air race has a limit of 12g - indicating that pilots can survive even that much.

I have witnessed pilots exceed 12g and be disqualified because of it - and the same pilot complained that the 12g limit was stupid. The limit is there to stop pilots from pushing it too far, in a bid to curb "lap" times.

However, how many super-fit and healthy people would be interested in euthanasia? not many I'd guess.

If they had no limits, whoever pulls the most Gs wins. It would be a contest where the loser blacks out and dies, and Red Bull doesn't want to support death sports, so we get a reasonable limit (though higher than I'd consider safe, but that's their call, not mine).

Yes, and they do it in an incredibly uncomfortable way. I'd be willing to bet that the person who suggested this has never pulled more than about 2Gs. When the acceleration is enough that it's hard to pump blood up into your head, you experience nausea and lots of small pains. This generally starts mildly at around 4Gs and becomes progressively worse as the force increases.

Basically, this idea sounds like someone saying 'well, the blood draining out of your brain is quite a relaxing way to die, we shoul

When the acceleration is enough that it's hard to pump blood up into your head, you experience nausea and lots of small pains.

For the more adventurous among you, you can test mild varieties of this yourself by swinging your arm, extended, making circles with your hand.

Do this at a normal pace, compare that hand to the other, it'll be a fair bit more red.Do this faster, and you'll start to feel some of that 'small pains' - it's not entirely unlike when your hand's 'asleep', but more painful.Go faster still a

Swinging your arm around quickly may indeed be slightly painful. But that is a much higher G-force, well above that which would make you lose consciousness. If your arm is 1 meter long, and you are spinning it around at two revolutions per second (I'm sure you can do more than that), the tips will already be experiencing 15g.

The only ill effects I've had from high G-forces is tiredness and a slight headache afterwards, never during the event.

This was my thought as well. Some acceleration can be fun, but it is very uncomfortable beyond a certain point, and enough to kill you would be extremely painful. You want death to be either non-violent or extremely quick, if possible. This is neither. And several minutes of anticipation? Fuck no. I'll take a morphine OD (which seems painless from what I know of it), if it comes to that.

If you look how Medical doctors who commit suicide do it, barbiturates are their most common method. Which makes sense because doctors have access to drugs so they are more likely to choose drugs, but the fact they select that class of drug, suggests its probably the most comfortable way to end it all. They would be the experts after all..

What I've never quite understood is why any kind of drugs is preferable to, say, a.22LR (to prevent it being overly messy) bullet to the head? Surely the latter is instantaneous, and likely much more foolproof in a DIY case than any chemical solution?

What I've never quite understood is why any kind of drugs is preferable to, say, a.22LR (to prevent it being overly messy) bullet to the head? Surely the latter is instantaneous, and likely much more foolproof in a DIY case than any chemical solution?

Way too many people linger and bleed out (or live) after being shot in the head with small caliber weapons. (Gabby Gifford).

You want it messy, its the only way you can be sure you don't suffer. Who cares about the mess?

it's still messy and a bit fiddly to secure the gun in such a way that it can't slip or be pulled away instinctively, and also to aim for the brain stem. the cheapest solution is probably to shave one's head, duct tape an L bracket to the barrel, and then use a lot of duct tape to secure the upper bar of the L bracket to the back of the shaved noggin (use a mirror to ensure aim).

at any rate, a gun's not going to be totally clean anyway and, as others have said: the cleaner, the less reliable. i'd say, just

I'm not sure a high-powered death-coaster is going to qualify as "humane" for anybody who isn't a bit of an adrenaline junky prior to their planned demise.

It lacks some of the sculptural potential; but I have to imagine that there are dozens to hundreds of possibilities taken from the anesthesiologists' "Don't do this or the patient will die." course that are at least as euphoric, quite as lethal, and not so disquieting to the inner ear...

Someone has to drag the corpses out of the roller coaster, and that isn't going to be pretty. I think a nice long free-fall with a parachute programmed to hit an active volcano would be a bit more creative. They get to enjoy a blissful free-fall, gentle descent and quick cremation. Best of all, no mess and no fuss.

I think the parachute bit is a bad idea. Just freefall straight into the volcano, or you'd end up cooking uncomfortably before you actually died.. actually, the heat from the volcano would probably also make it pretty difficult to get the 'chute down into the lava..

I had always imagined that the most euphoric way to die would be fulfilling some religious or quasi-religious mission. So if you hype yourself up to, say, mass killing for your cause and the prospect of a glorious afterlife, the seconds before you hit the detonator must feel wonderful.

Fortunately, I'm not a thrill-seeker, I don't like killing people, and - most importantly of all - I don't think random attacks on civilians for political causes are likely to be effective. Especially not since the IRA has mov

The best euthanasia would be being trampled to death by a harem of attractive woman.

Might need something work for women and people who don't like women; and its not as painless, but it'll be awesome.

I'm thinking this is fairly easy to accomplish. Just go marry several attractive women, promise them things their heart desires, gather them all in one room and tell them it was a joke and you married all of them at the same time just to be a dick. I suspect trampling is going to be in your future.

I have an easier and cheaper alternative...once they embark on a roller coaster ride for an attempted suicide, they will go on a small trip on a roller coaster small enough for children to go on, but at random intervals and random locations, you will have specific neck level guillotines (adjustable based on height of the person).

As the person rides, they will encounter at last second a blade that whips out from nowhere, and slices the head clean off....if the person is willing to go through a roller coaster

Nitrogen asphyxiation is probably the best way to go. The body doesn't realize when it's running out of oxygen. It only senses a high level of carbon dioxide. Therefore, inhaling only nitrogen will result in death but there won't be any gasping or discomfort because the body thinks that everything is just groovy.

The guests arrive in the entrance hall here, are carried along the corridor on a conveyor belt in extreme comfort and past murals depicting Mediterranean scenes, towards the rotating knives. The last twenty feet of the corridor are heavily soundproofed. The blood pours down these chutes and the mangled flesh slurps into these large containers. None of your blood caked on the walls and flesh flying out of the windows inconveniencing passers-by with this one.

According to TFA, the plan is that inertia prevents blood circulation to the brain, starving it of oxygen and inducing death. Unfortunately, there are a lot of increasingly impaired outcomes short of death that depriving the brain of oxygen can give you. Suicide certainly isn't for everyone; but I don't know of anyone who is looking for some serious permanent brain damage...

That is either for short amounts of time or with proper equipment (G-Suit).
When I flew glider planes, we used to go up to 6.5 -7G and it is really hard work to stay conscience. I have doubts about the elegance and euphoria described though, above 7G things really start to hurt, your nose will be dripping, ear wax will pop out of your ears,... If you're physically weak, you'll probably have small arteries in your legs burst too due to the increases blood pressure.